Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Fall of Rome.

As always, I'm your host Patrick Weiman.

Today, I'll be joined by a fantastic guest.

She's an editor for The Washington Post, a writer on Christianity and Politics, and I

have to say, one of the sharpest dang people I've ever had the pleasure of reading and listening

to.

Elizabeth Brunig, thank you so much for joining me today.

Thank you so much for having me on.

So the topic of our discussion today is going to be something I have deeply neglected on

this show, Christianity or more specifically Saint Augustine.

So before we get into it, a few brief words on Augustine to give you all some context.

He was born in the year 354 in Thagasta and what's now Algeria in North Africa, and do

a well to do family and received a fantastic education.

So after teaching in Carthage for a while, he moved to Rome and then went to post as a

teacher of rhetoric at the Imperial Court in Milan.

It was in Milan that he converted to Christianity under the influence of the Great Bishop Ambrose

of Milan.

And there, and in the aftermath, he began to write some incredible works of theology, including

his confessions, maybe the first autobiography as we would understand it.

So his masterpiece, The City of God, came after the sack of Rome by the Visigoths in 410.

And by that point, he was the Bishop of the City of Hippo in Africa, where he died as

the Vandals laid siege to the city in 430.

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